R.Scott Bakker - Disciple of the dog

Needless to say, Molly politely declined my invitation to spend the night. “Let me get this straight,” she said in the no man’s land between our two motel room doors. “A girl is dead. A good cop’s career has been ruined. Some poor homeless guy took a bullet in the head. And you were thinking you might get laid a second time, huh?”

“We all grieve in our own way, Molls.”

She gave me a look I had seen 138 times before… Funny, the way old dope smokers grow suspicion like fur.

“You actually scare me,” she said in the flat tone women reserve for utterly honest comments. “You know that, Disciple?”

She was exhausted, bewildered, and now she was hurt.

Even still, I said, “Yeah… I suppose you have your fifteen hundred words to write… “

Her tears took me by surprise. She started to say something but literally caught her mouth in her hands. She darted to her door without a word, but I knew what she had wanted to say.

Poison, Disciple. Why do you turn everything into poison? I schlepped into my room, absorbed the chaotic landscape of tangled sheets, pocket trash, and tossed clothes. What a slob I was.

Tired. So tired.

I smoked a joint.

Jerked off.

Bed. Sunday… I slept like the dead. Cruel hearts always sleep soundly, I suppose. It was almost noon before I awoke.

I had no idea how police shootings were investigated in Pennsylvania, so I thought it would probably be a good idea if I stashed my bag of weed for the time being. I went to Odd-Jobs for a solo breakfast, hid my Baggie in the dropped ceiling of their washroom.

They had this ancient TV in the dining area, one of those fat-screen jobbies that had looked futuristic back in the Clinton days. A little electric window on the world, and a safe haven when Brittany, the waitress, caught you checking out her cleavage. There it was, live as live can be, electromagnetically speaking.

Ruddick was being televised. I could tell by the courthouse facade rising behind the saccharine beauty of the reporter’s face. Some local channel by the looks of her-too much asymmetry in her face for the big time. Too much nose. The volume was muted, or maybe broken, but the title glowing beneath the painted woman confirmed what I already knew…

Molly had been busy. I felt a flare of pride for her, and no small amount of regret. Up to that point I had been anticipating some vigorous makeup sex…

Celebrity has a way of booking people solid. I returned to my room all perked on coffee and finally sat on the end of my bed with my cell. The time had come to call Mandy-Mrs. Bonjour. My brain was buzzing: it had yet to process the consequences of last night, let alone wrap itself around this latest twist in circumstances.

There was the Church of the Third Resurrection situation for one. It seemed to me that I was looking at one of two possibilities: either Reverend Nill was even crazier than I thought and he was the one responsible for Jennifer’s murder, or someone was trying to bring him down. My gut told me that it was the latter, but unlike the rest of the human race, I have no faith whatsoever in my gut. It does a fair to middling job processing my dinner into shit, but other than that, it clearly does not know shit.

I know that you buy into all that “go with your gut” or “follow your heart” bullshit simply because I see versions of it everywhere, from tampon commercials to Palme d’Or-winning cinema. But I remember all the instances where my instincts have been dead wrong, not to mention the instincts of those around me. Given that your bean is a cherry- picking machine, you remember only what confirms your assumptions. So of course you think your gut is a pretty good one, especially when you’re full of shit.

No. I wasn’t going to listen to my instincts on this one. I’d spent too much time with my thumb up my ass as it was. When it came to the Thirds, I needed to review things, maybe talk to Tim… Dutchie.

I imagined he was pretty pissed.

As for Nolen, well, I supposed he was pretty much out of the picture. The Bonjour investigation would be handed to Jeff Hamilton, his deputy chief, and it would probably take a day or two to re-wrangle things. I probably couldn’t count on the kind of assistance I had enjoyed so far: he struck me as a hard nut. Since I was the Bonjours’ man in the field, he would have to extend me certain courtesies-regular updates, the odd heads-up here and there-but copies of official statements? Fat chance. He would be too bent on proving himself.

The gathering media storm could change all that, of course. The positive was that it could turn Dead Jennifer into a national celebrity, and so enhance the chances of catching a break from someone who knew something without realizing they knew anything. The biggest negative was that it would slowly starve the Bonjours of emotional oxygen. The second drawback was that it would politicize the investigation. The simultaneous promise and threat of optics would bring in the Attorney General, state law enforcement, the FBI-as sure as shit.

Sooner or later, the heavy hitters would roll into town, and the “courtesies” they extended me would become more and more ornamental. Backslaps and grins tend to make me especially prickish.

Besides, I wasn’t sure how much “media scrutiny” a tarnished fuck- up like Disciple Manning could bear. I would look good on TV-that much was certain. For that reason alone I would probably be forgiven quite a bit, at first anyway. The world really is that super-fucking-ficial. But if they started digging…

Yup. I would be well and truly fucked.

There was a real issue here. An animal’s habitat is defined by the range of environments that allow it to squeak by. Feed and fuck, basically. So far I had been able to do both quite nicely. But things had changed radically, and were about to change even more radically still. The media sun was about to burn very hot and very close. The question was whether I could continue playing a role in the environmental collapse to come. Whether I could be a plus. For the case. For the drug-and-bimbo-binging travesty I call my life…

Would it be possible for me to run a clean private investigation?

Not bloody likely.

In any event, it was already too late. At the time I had thought myself pretty clever, gathering both “donations” and information with the toss of a single fraudulent stone. Vegas, baby. Now I wasn’t so sure. I could even see the news caption:

Yeesh. What was I thinking?

Certainly not about CNN-that’s for damn sure.

The dismay came across me slowly-catastrophic realizations may outrun their emotional implications, but they never outdistance them.

Unless something decisive fell into my lap, and soon, I was going to have to cut and run…

Fawk. “Amanda… It’s me, Disciple Manning. I’m afr-”

“I know… I h-heard… It’s on the news…”

Owich.

God hates me. That’s gotta be it. God hates me because I don’t believe in him.

“My baby. “ She started weeping. “M-m-my…”

“Amanda,” I said sternly. “I know this is the worst of possible times, but we have to discuss money. I’m running out of dough down here.”

I know what you’re thinking. You bastard. The woman has just discovered her daughter is dead, that her daughter’s fingers and toes have been turning up across an obscure industrial burnout of a town, and you’re asking her to cut you a cheque-when you’re already flush with the cash you scammed!

But that’s not it at all. I would cash the cheque, eventually, but that’s not the reason I brought up money. Money is cold, and more importantly, money is routine. Like I said earlier, that’s what makes money talk such a great way to throw cold water across overheated or overwrought clients: it reminds them of the reason they came to me in the first place.